Paul Nuttall's TV Suicide Bid

So after he made himself scarce in the aftermath of not winning the Stoke on Trent Central by-election, Paul Nuttall, still alleged to be the leader of UKIP, was subjected to the inquisition of the host on The Andy Marr Show (tm) this morning and demonstrated once and for all that he is not fit to administer an act of alcoholic derangement in an EU wine lake, let alone lead what claims to be a serious political party.

An' then I pulled the trigger, but it still didn't extinguish me burning keks

Worse for the “Bad Bootle Meff”, he later presented himself at Sky News (“first for breaking wind”) to be interviewed by Sophy Ridge, and did all the less than impressive things he had done in his Marr Show interview, except worse. But he was sure that the political discourse would return to favour UKIP. And he was, once again, not going anywhere, which must present problems when he needs to leave the studio.

It had, he told Marr, been a “highly personal campaign”. This may have had something to do with his being the person standing for UKIP in that by-election. But there was more: “My family were being hounded in a way that I think most politicians will never have to go through … when your 86 year old grandmother … gets a camera shoved in her face … when your father’s being followed to work … it is difficult”.

Did he not know that Ed Miliband’s father had been slagged off in a highly personal manner, even though he was dead? Has he not seen the press pursuit of Jeremy Corbyn? The abuse hurled regularly at Nick Clegg, even though he’s no longer a party leader? And he should have considered himself lucky Marr didn’t bring up that house in Stoke he wasn’t living in when he claimed he was on his nomination papers.

Instead, Nuttall blamed the Labour Party, rather than himself: “there was an orchestrated smear campaign … which was done by a political party”. Was it the Labour Party he was accusing of smearing him? “Well, yes I am, actually”. But there was a get-out clause.

Squeaky no knighthood full stop finger up the bum time

“People need to get a bit of perspective on this. It’s not as if I’ve lied about weapons of mass destruction, it’s not as if I’ve taken us into an illegal war”. Nuttall went one better when being subjected to the inquisition of Ms Ridge, when he claimed that, on his Hillsborough disaster creativity, “I want to put this in perspective ... I've never been caught in a paedophile gang or anything”. No, just lying, that’s all.

 And it was all the rotten media’s fault: “this is another media lie. Just because you tell a lie often enough doesn’t make it the truth” he told Marr. Which more or less sums up his problems - it’s not the media, it’s not the Labour Party, it’s not Michael Crick turning up unexpectedly to stick a rental agreement in front of him and tell him he just happened to have broken electoral law, it’s down plainly and simply to Himself.

So what of his predecessor? “Nigel Farage deserves a knighthood or a peerage, he’s been one of the most influential political figures in British politics since the turn of this century”. Yeah, right. There is a difference between “being influential” and “spending most of his waking hours under the influence”. Nuttall has convinced nobody with his interviews today.

The UKIP leader is still a comedy figure, a proven serial liar, a less than credible politician, an evasive and untrustworthy charlatan. And he’s still a Bad Bootle Meff.